


The Light In Our Bones

by Menthol_Drops



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ANGSTFEST 2K15 IT SEEMS, All Roads Lead To A Kiss, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Fluff, Hurt!Sam, I Tried, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I love to torture myself, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, THE FLUFF HAS BEGUN, There's not a tag for implied suicidal ideation so, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, This is going to get better i swear, This isn't great but then again i've only written two of these so, like really hurt i'm sorry, sorry folks, there will be fluff I promise, there won't be any smut on this one, this keeps getting longer and longer, woooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menthol_Drops/pseuds/Menthol_Drops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's on the verge of dying (again) and Hallucifer won't let him eat, sleep, or even talk to most people. Suddenly it starts getting better, and there is nothing Sam wouldn't give for this to be a good thing. It is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Cannot Forget

**Author's Note:**

> HA. I KNOW. WHO NEEDS MORE HURT!SAMMY. NO B O DY BUT I LOVE TORTURING MYSELF AT 3AM SO YEAH THIS HAPPENED.  
> Expect Ch. 2 in a few days (I have an essay to write for thursday and no wifi at home so)  
> Any and all errors of any kind are mine and mine alone as I do not have a beta!

One week. 7 days. 24 hours in a day. 168 hours since Sam had slept for more than five seconds before Lucifer decided to set something on fire, blow up a fire cracker, play music (seriously, what was it with Led Zeppelin? You’d think he’d be more into AC/DC) or, give him some horrid nightmare. Honestly, he was done, the only reason he didn’t try anything was because he was in a psych ward where even the salt and pepper shakers were “hurt-proof” and he didn’t have the strength to get something from one of the doctors.

Sam had also been unable to eat anything since he was put in the ward, also a courtesy of Lucifer, so the doctors had placed him on suicide watch and were trying to get him to eat so he wouldn’t fall too underweight, but the maggots and parasites weren’t really a big incentive to eat, no matter how not real they were.  It felt all too real to bite into the sandwiches and feel the bugs moving around his mouth. It was also really gross.

It was his fifth night in the ward, the visions of hellfire and torture not letting him sleep, when it first happened, a cool sensation that put him at ease and while he still couldn’t fall asleep he wasn’t feeling the fire anymore, couldn’t hear the screams from his hell memories, and felt at ease for the first time in weeks. That was weird, but he was too tired to care, so he just went with it.

It kept getting weirder. Well, even weirder than before, because honestly he expected the insanity to happen at one point or another but Sam was thrown off by the calm that happened whenever that cool sensation washed over him. He’d done a test and the only ghost around was Marin’s brother, and he’d helped her out with it as soon as he could, which had landed him in solitary for a day or two, but that was worth it, Marin was discharged three days later, with a warning to not miss any appointments. But he’d been unlucky enough to suffer through some of Lucifer’s favorite torture methods while in solitary so they’d extended his stay by a few more weeks, because of all the screaming. Apparently he’d screamed so loud they’d been able to hear him outside the room, which was supposedly soundproof. Not a good thing.

_“Just stop already! I’m already dying isn’t that enough?” Sam screamed as Lucifer kept cutting into him with a butcher’s knife. “No, Sam, it won’t ever be enough, because you broke the world, you threw me into Hell, you killed everyone that ever helped, loved or cared for you” Lucifer spoke calmly, as he picked up a leather flogger with metal bits at the ends. “Your mom, Jessica, Amy,  Madison, Dean, your dad, Bobby, every. Single. Person. You have failed. To save. Every. Single. One. That’s what’s this is for Sam.”  Every word was marked by a whip to Sam’s body, the metal bits cutting into his skin over and over again. This was his penance. There would never be anything else, he reasoned. He was doomed from the start. All he could do was scream and scream, hoping that this would make up for everything he’d done, everything he’d done and failed to do. Chant Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa, Forgive me father, for I have sinned. There was never a greater sinner on Earth than he who worked under His name but realized Hell’s work instead. All this. And it would never be enough._

The night he left the solitary room the cool sensation came back, and he was able to get an hour of sleep. One whole hour.  His nurses cheered the next morning when he told them, one hour was great improvement from literally zero, but he wondered, because he wasn’t even supposed to be alive anymore, he hadn’t slept in weeks, or eaten more than two bites of anything. The only thing that could’ve made this happen was an angel, and Castiel was either dead or MIA in heaven. He wouldn’t dare consider that the only other angel that might’ve wanted to help him was doing this. The real Lucifer was in Hell, no way he could be doing this. Not even possible since Dean had the Rings, and Lilith was dead. According to Gabriel there were very few ways to open the Cage, so no, that was out.

Things kept getting better and better until he just began asking into his empty room one night who was doing that and why. That’s when the cool sensation came back, but so strong the temperature dropped 20 degrees in three seconds, suddenly Lucifer materialized in front of him and Sam just rolled his eyes “Real funny Lucifer, go away I’m not up for this right now”. Lucifer just frowned and said “up for what? What’s going on Sam?” Sam scoffed and just laid down on the bed wishing he could just fall asleep again. He started thinking about how years ago he would’ve probably said he was going to die from old age in his bed or a hunting accident in a forest somewhere, not from exhaustion, starvation and insanity in a psych ward. It was actually kind of ironic. There was a hand on his shoulder, and when he looked over Lucifer was still there, muttering something or other, then he fell asleep again.

Then it got downright awkward. When he woke up it had been five hours and he was looking at two of Lucifer, standing side by side, one smirking like a maniac and the other looking as worried as the devil could never look. He sighed out “Okay, what the hell, now there’s two of you?” the one that was smirking just laughed and said “You’re even crazier that I thought” while the other one moved closer to him. “Get away from me, you’re not real!” all he got was a sad look and a pleaded “Sam… I am real, please let me show you”. “If you can make the other one go away then maybe I’ll believe you” hissed Sam, this was just great. He was bargaining with a hallucination. He really was nuts. Lucifer walked up to him and touched his forehead, Sam tensing up under the touch, expecting a punch or a slap, not the tenderness that this one was showing. Lucifer whispered “What happened? Why are your memories so out of order?” then he felt a snap and as the missing pieces of memories were put back, it all made sense.


	2. And I Cannot Forgive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ding dong guess what? i'm adding a third chapter to this, there's just too much to finish up in one chapter if i don't want to make it ridiculously long.

Fire. How it had never occurred to him, he didn’t know. Lucifer was ice, blizzards, winter, not fire. Never fire, he had said so himself, that day in Detroit, when he said Yes. Michael on the other hand, he burned, flames were his work. He had burned Anna straight out of existence that day back in 1979. The Cage was a very boring place to be in. Michael had been the one to torture Sam, Lucifer had tried to help him but Michael made sure he could never get close enough to do so.

Lucifer had angel-ported him to a quiet cabin in the northern woods of Washington state, after making sure to heal Sam from the injuries he suffered in the car crash, Dean was off doing who knows what, probably on a bender those past few weeks. When they got there Sam was too weak to move, so Lucifer picked him up and put him in a bed that had the softest pillow-top mattress Sam had ever felt, after tucking him in like a too-worried mother, Lucifer put him into a deep sleep for a few days so he could recover. Once he woke up, Sam asked about Hell, and how Lucifer had managed to escape without the rings or Lilith. At that last one, Lucifer smiled sadly, “it took a great amount of Grace to get out, and a while longer to recover it all, about six months total, it’s why it took me this long to get to you, I planned on getting there before any of this happened.” That had surprised Sam, he didn’t think that Lucifer actually cared that much about him.

“Of course I care, Sam, you and I… We are two halves of one whole, your soul… it’s literally made out of a piece of my Grace, Father allowed me to help make it, all souls are made purely of His energy, but I kept complaining because Gabriel kept making things and I didn’t get to make any, so he allowed me to contribute to a soul, it was put into line for a future body, it was why you were my vessel.” Sam felt himself choke up “is that why you wouldn’t let kill myself? Is that why you allowed Ellen and Jo to die? Why I had to do so many evil things?” Sam was starting to get angry, it was all a front? “No, Sam it’s not a front-” “Stop reading my mind” “alright, I won’t do that, but listen to me, it’s not a front. I couldn’t let you kill yourself because then your soul would just go to Heaven and then Zachariah would be able to torture you into saying yes to me, and that would be against my promise, Ellen and Jo, unfortunately, were out of my control, Nick was too weak because of the ritual to bring them back, and the last one… It if it had been up to me, no blood would have been required, nothing at all, just you.”

Sam sniffled and with a broken voice he said “but now? Now you won’t bring them back at all, I still can’t die… why won’t you?” Lucifer just sighed “Let me tell you about what happened, perhaps then you’d understand why.” Sam just sat down on the bed, eyeing Lucifer wearily.

“When I fell, the first time, I was alone; I had nothing to do except observe Hell and the world above, then a certain mid-level by the name of Azazel, manages to open a gateway for me to talk somewhere around 1973, I told him about Lilith and about a “special child” then went back to doing absolutely nothing but suffer in boredom. The cage shifts to show your greatest fears, and after a couple hundred millennia you really have nothing to fear but your own death, and that also gets boring after a while. Then it was another ten years when I felt a sort of disturbance in the Force. Your soul had just come down to Earth. Mary was pregnant with you.” Sam looked up with tears in his eyes “you knew when my mom got pregnant with me?” “Not the exact moment but when your soul was placed into your body, I knew”

Sam sniffled and Lucifer sat down next to him, “I wish I could have done something, I do, she shouldn’t have died, but once a soul is earmarked for hell there’s nothing we can do” Sam nodded, the tears starting to fall “so they were right, all those angels and all those demons, I never truly had a choice” “Sam, nothing will ever hurt me more than knowing that. They fixed the odds, the angels wanted nothing more than to get rid of all the responsibility they never wanted, and the best way to do that was to have the Apocalypse happen.” Lucifer wanted nothing more than to make sure Sam never hurt again but didn’t know how to ask if he could hug the taller man, but when he started looking or something to comfort him, Lucifer took the chance to ask “can I… can I comfort you? Please, Sam, I want to help you feel better.” He honestly expected a punch or at the very least scandalized yelling, not the nod that came instead. Sam had lied down on the bed so Lucifer moved next to him and began to rub his shoulders. “I know I can say that I’m sorry a thousand times over and it still won’t change the fact that I’ve put you through so much, Sam”. After a long pause Sam said “you’re right, it won’t change that, but if you show me you’re really sorry then maybe I can begin to work on forgiving you for everything.” Lucifer gave a small hum at that, and then kept massaging Sam’s back, helping him relax.

During the next few days Lucifer kept doing little things to make Sam comfortable like snapping his favorite foods into the cabin, and keeping the place neat and at a comfortable temperature. Despite those days of continuous sleep, most of Sam’s tiredness was that of the emotional kind, and it would take much longer to recover from that. Sam fell asleep on the cabin’s couch one night, and Lucifer carried him back to the bed, where he laid Sam down and tucked him in. He opened his eyes as Lucifer began to move away and said in the sleepiest voice Lucifer had ever heard “Stay, please, I… I sleep better when you’re near me.”

He complied, lying sown under the comforter with Sam, who moved to put his head on Lucifer’s chest. “I don’t know why I’m doing this” he muttered, “I should want to destroy you, not cuddle with you, or talk to you, anything at all.” Lucifer had started to run his hands through Sam’s hair and without stopping he replied “well, I think that you’re still recovering from everything that horrid hallucination did, and while he took on my image, none of what he did were things I did. You’re still trying to reconnect the memories with reality.” Sam just shook his head “my life is so weird that that actually makes sense”, all Lucifer could do was let out a small laugh at that. He kept running his hands through Sam’s hair until he fell asleep.

After that, Lucifer kept making sure Sam was doing well, talking and spoiling him through his low days and making him laugh and flick whatever he had in his hands at the moment at him. One day Sam asked to see Lucifer’s wings. “I know it’s a very personal thing to ask and I honestly don’t know if it’s even possible, but if you can show them to me, will you?” “They aren’t… they aren’t that good looking anymore. They’re burnt and the feathers are tangled into a mess”. Sam thought for a moment and said “well, maybe I can help you out with that, just teach me how.” After a long pause Lucifer nodded and handed Sam a tray he’d thought up with hot towels and a bowl of water and sat down in front of him on the floor, “Close your eyes for a second.” Sam obeyed and saw a flash of bright white light behind his closed eyelids “can I open them now?” “Well, if you want to see them then I suppose you should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 post date: Wednesday 23, I have a doc's appointment that day so i'll be able to post early on since i won't be going to class.


	3. But I Can Still Love You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, yes, I lied about this being posted early, but doctor's appointments, errands, no wifi and an 8-page paper usually back things up a bit, but here it is, the last chapter! I hope this meets all of your expectations and feel free to yell at me if it doesn't, or if you find an error, since all those are mine and mine only

When Sam opened his eyes there was a small moment where he couldn’t process what he was seeing. Lucifer was sitting on the floor in front of the old couch, facing him, cerulean blue eyes staring up full of hope at Sam, hope that he wouldn’t reject him because of his tarnished wings. The burnt feathers looked as if they were obsidian, but the ones that weren’t burnt were the colors of the sunrise, dark blue fading into pale hues of purple, orange, and white, each feather a little dawn of its own, turning into shimmering ripples whenever the wings moved. Sam’s jaw had dropped out of amazement and he quickly closed his mouth when he realized Lucifer was starting to look nervous and whispered “they’re beautiful, Luce.”

Lucifer replied with a shaking voice “Beautiful, more like a mess”, Sam looked at him and lifted his chin up with a soft smile “teach me how to groom them, we’ll make them look better again” Lucifer nodded and turned around so Sam could have better access to his wings and began giving instructions. “You have to wash them out first, with the towels and the warm water, they’re very dirty”, Sam did so, carefully dipping the hot towel into the water and running it through the feathers of the left wing, Lucifer sighed softly as the warmth spread through the abused appendage, slowly stretching it out as he relaxed. Sam kept going until the last of the feathers had been toweled down on the right wing, “Okay now you have to go through the feathers and untangle them, some will come out, some will pop back into place” purred Lucifer, who had relaxed completely as Sam washed his wings and was now a sleepy pliant goo beneath Sam’s hands. Sam smiled as he began, once again on the left wing, to slowly untangle the feathers, and as each loose feather fell out and the ones that had been caught by those were easily put back into place.

A few hours after Sam had finished grooming Lucifer’s wings, and had a nap, Lucifer slept with his arms around Sam, whose head was pillowed into Lucifer’s chest, they were trekking through the woods around the cabin together so Sam could get some exercise and fresh air, and they had stopped to sit on a boulder by a creek to rest when Lucifer asked “do you want to go back to Dean?” Sam looked at Lucifer confused, “eventually, I guess, but I don’t think I’m ready to hunt yet, like you said a couple of nights ago, I have to take it easy for now, until I feel better. Why did you ask?” Lucifer looked down at the creek and mumbled “I don’t really want you to go, we’ll have to be apart and I feel we’ve grown close…” Sam looked up at the sky, a blush creeping up his neck “We have grown close, Luce, I really think so, and while I eventually do have to go back to Dean, it doesn’t mean we can’t be together then” Lucifer looked over at him and said “you think so? I don’t think your brother would be all that exited to see me, especially not seeing us like that” Sam looked back at Lucifer “I know, but we’ll explain, and he’ll have to understand, I guess.”

After that they sat together in silence for another 15 minutes, then walked back to the cabin, where Sam prepared a salad with fresh ingredients while Lucifer left for a second to get drinks, since they’d run out at the cabin, and came back with water and a lemonade pitcher. “I got this from a stand in the nearest town from some kids, they were selling it by the glass and I offered to buy the whole pitcher, they agreed.” Sam smiled “you getting along with kids? Must be the end of the world” Lucifer poked him on the side “ha ha, you’re so funny.” Sam just laughed at that.

After eating and each taking a shower, Sam and Lucifer went out to sit on the cabin’s porch to watch the sunset, “I never did thank you for getting me out of that hospital, did I?” Lucifer replied “You didn’t have to, it was something that had to be done; there was no way I was just going to let you stay like that.”

“But still, the polite thing to do is to thank you, and I didn’t do that.” Lucifer sighed “I know you’re grateful, and I also know that you’re still suspicious of me, for obvious reasons, but what I did, getting you out of that hospital, was not only my duty as your “guardian angel” for lack of better words, it was something I wanted to do. I couldn’t bear seeing you like that, so weak and tired. Especially when you’re supposed to be dressed in finery and being treated with the utmost care, clothes and comfort fit for a king, not hospital scrubs and nurses who don’t even know your real name or how you were truly suffering.”

Sam moved to lay his head on Lucifer’s shoulder, the now familiar scent of crisp winter air and pines making him feel at ease, an unsure pair of lips laid a kiss down on his head as Sam let out a deep sigh. “Look, I don’t deserve any of that, or any of what you’ve given me, but thank you.” Lucifer whispered against his hair “you deserve that and more, but we’ll work on getting you there, for now, since you insist, you’re welcome, darling.” Sam moved closer to Lucifer “are we doing pet names now, sweetheart? Because, honey, I think I can work with that.” He looked up to see Lucifer’s playful eyes give away the smile that was barely forming on his lips. Sam’s own now hazel-gray eyes had a smile behind them as well as he moved up to touch his forehead against Lucifer’s and whisper “tell me something, do you think I’ve forgiven you?”

“I do” Lucifer whispered back.

“Well, you’re right, I have” Sam replied as he moved in closer, nervous twitches trying to find their mark, as Lucifer moved too and their lips met, nothing passionate or sloppy, just a chaste touch that seemed to have been waiting centuries to occur, and had an universe of meaning behind it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make the author's heart beat, my friends


End file.
